Start Of Darkness / Video Games

• Ace Attorney: A variation given he was already a hard-ass to begin with, but Gyakuten Kenji 2 explains in more detail how Manfred von Karma turned from a "mere" Jerkass to a full-blown villain who murdered Gregory Edgeworth for tarnishing his perfect win record. This was also the start for Miles, as Manfred took him in shortly thereafter and began to instill his "win at all costs" mentality in him.
• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! deals with Handsome Jack's rise to power and how he went from someone with legitimately heroic aspirations to the power-hungry and delusional villain of Borderlands 2. However, Borderlands 3 reveals in a side-mission the true start. After learning his daughter Angel manifested Siren powers and fearing she would be a target for anyone who would want her for themselves, she was eventually kidnapped in front of him and his wife by a bandit named Grogmouth. A scared Angel accidentally activated her abilities and took control of Grogmouth's turrets, firing wildly at everything. Not only does the bandit get killed, but so does Jack's wife/Angel's mother accidentally. This drives Jack clear over the Despair Event Horizon and Jumping Off the Slippery Slope in the process. He locks Angel (a child no less!) in a solitary chamber "for her own good", only to later decide to use her powers to his own benefit, starts the events of the first Borderlands in the process and rises up the ranks of Hyperion as seen in the Pre-Sequel.
• Castlevania The series reboot Lords of Shadow provides an alternate start of darkness: Gabriel Belmont, after learning that he is responsible for the death of his wife, that he cannot resurrect her using the magic mask as he has been led to believe, and that Satan has been using him to spearhead a war against God, begins on a path that leads to him becoming Dracula himself. Forcefully injecting himself With Great Power Comes Great Insanity to prevent another demon from retrieving it made things even worse - and it's implied that the demon in question is Lucifer.
• Each of the killers in Dead by Daylight has an origin story that is only explained on the official website.
  • The Huntress, Anna, watched her mother die protecting her from an elk they were hunting. Traumatized by her mother's death, she became a Crazy Survivalist, Hunting the Most Dangerous Game when Nazi German soldiers began intruding in her woods and abducting young girls to serve as a surrogate mother to them (while keeping them chained in her basement and neglecting them until they died, starting a vicious cycle of despair, abducting more girls to try again, and more despair when those girls died).
  • The Trapper, originally Evan MacMillan, was a loyal worker on his father's estate, but after his father's mental health degraded to the point of ordering him to massacre the rest of the workers, he in turn snapped and murdered his father, which earned him a spot in The Entity's ranks.
  • The Wraith, formerly Philip Ojomo, was a refugee from war-torn Africa who became a crusher operator at an auto chop-shop, but after learning that the main purpose of his job was actually to perform hits on people who were trapped inside the cars and that he'd already unknowingly killed dozens if not hundreds of people, he went mad, killed his boss in the same way he murdered all his other victims, then ripped out his head and spine, which he now uses as his primary weapon.
  • The Hillbilly, Max Thompson Jr., was hated by his parents since birth because of his physical deformity, and they locked him away in a room where the only contact he had with the outside world was being fed through a hole in the wall. Eventually, he escaped, murdering his parents and all of the animals on their farm.
  • The Nurse, Sally Smithson, had a good life and promising future, until her lumberjack husband died in a work accident, forcing her to take a job at Crotus Prenn Asylum to make ends meet. After spending two decades surrounded by insane people, she finally went insane herself, massacring all of the patients in the middle of the night.
  • The Shape is, well...Michael Myers.
  • The Hag, formerly known as Lisa Sherwood, lived in a quiet, friendly town, but one day lost her footing and struck her head, slipping in and out of consciousness because of a sudden storm, only to wake up to find herself captured by cannibals who were slowly eating her alive. When she finally escaped, she proceeded to devour her kidnappers.
  • The Deathslinger, once Caleb Quinn, had the misfortune of growing up a child of Irish migrants in America in a time that was not kind to Irish people in America. After having his life's works ripped off by everyone from a greedy business mogul to a greedy prison warden, he snapped and started using his magnum opus, a railroad spike-driving rifle, to kill everyone who wronged him.
  • The Spirit, formerly Rin Yamaoka, was a young student who worked part-time as a waitress to help her poverty-stricken family, and came home from work one day to find her father using an ancestral sword to murder her mother, at which point he fatally wounded Rin as well by slicing her into pieces. The Entity, fascinated by her powerful hatred as she was dying, resurrected her with the promise of taking revenge on her father.
• Diablo III: Reaper of Souls spends quite a bit of lore explaining how Adria became a heartless betrayer and agent of Diablo, as well as the fall of both Urzael and Malthael himself.
• The manuals for the Disciples series detail the backstory, including the Start of Darkness for the two evil deities of the setting (as opposed to just Jerkass Gods). Bethrezen started out as the Highfather's favorite angel, to whom the Highfather gave the power to create. Bethrezen then made Nevendaar (the game world) and asked other deities to fill it with life, himself creating humans. Then Bethrezen asked the other angels to watch over the world and went to get the Highfather to show him his creation. The jealous angels messed with the mortal races, so by the time the Highfather arrived to see Nevendaar, the world was afire with war and destruction. Outraged at Bethrezen, the Highfather entombed him within the molten core of his own creation for all eternity. After millennia in the core, Bethrezen grew bitter at the Highfather and the mortal races, becoming the setting's Devil and creating the Legions of the Damned as his army. The demonic legions burst onto the surface in the elven woods, sending the elves running for the hills, which happened to be in dwarven territory. Assuming the elves were invading, the dwarves attacked them. The elven gods Gallean and Solonielle confronted the dwarven god Wotan and demanded that he punish his children for the unprovoked attack. Enraged, Wotan killed Gallean and threw his heart at the sun. Solonielle managed to jump and catch the heart, but her flesh was burned off. The grief, the desire for vengeance, and the pain warped Solonielle into the fleshless goddess Mortis, whoc slaughtered an entire people and raised them up as her Undead Hordes.
• DragonFable's Fire War is a Start Of Darkness for Drakonnan. Once Yulgar's apprentice, Konnan called upon the hero to stop the rampage of the red dragon Akriloth upon his home village. But despite the hero's best efforts and the powers of the hero's recently acquired dragon, they were no match for Akriloth and the power of the Fire Orb. Akriloth, instead of finishing the hero, sadistically made them watch as he burned the village to the ground, killing Konnan's family. Konnan blamed the hero for failing to save them and when the evil pyromancer Xan got his hooks into him, this would turn into a desire for revenge that would soon threaten the entire land of Lore.
• This occurs in the backstory of Fallout 4 for the Institute. Having sequestered themselves far below the Commonwealth for roughly a century while working on creating Ridiculously Human Robots to help rebuild civilization with, they were already pretty distrusted and regarded with suspicion by the residents of the Wasteland above, many of whom saw their offers of We Can Rule Together as Schmuck Bait. Eventually, the Institute decided to help the Commonwealth as a gesture of good will by secretly organizing the Commonwealth Provisional Government, an alliance of like-minded representatives of various settlements from across the Commonwealth that would come together and help organize the beginnings of a new society (similar to the creation of the New California Republic in Fallout 2). Unfortunately, unlike the historical Constitutional Congress they were based on, the members of the CPG were never able to come to a consensus and killed each other - leaving only the Institute's representative the Sole Survivor of the shootout. The Institute was then promptly blamed by the rest of the Commonwealth for their chance at a new society getting smashed to pieces. This set the Institute on their dark path to villainy, with them now regarding the Commonwealth as a lost cause full of unkempt savages only worthy of being used as tools in their quest to create a world that won't fall victim to Atomic Hate. At least, this is the version of the story that the Institute tells.
• Final Fantasy Tactics has the first chapter, "The Meager", which shows Delita and Wiegraf's starts of darkness, both triggered by the murders of their respective sisters.
• A series of side quests and cutscenes in Final Fantasy XIV show the origin of Edda Blackbosom: she was initially Edda Pureheart, a slightly inept Conjurer who was the Butt-Monkey of the team of adventurers, including her fiance, a Gladiator named Avere. However, while exploring the Tam-Tara Dungeon, Avere's decision to charge forward without help lead to him losing his head. Her teammates put the blame squarely on her shoulders as they broke apart and, after you give her a pep talk, she seems determined to start things anew. However, the grief of her fiance's death and a run in with a mysterious figure would lead her to turn to necromancy and turn evil.
• After the reveal of Scott Shelby being the Origami Killer in Heavy Rain, you're treated to a flashback to his childhood where his brother is stuck in a pipe and is drowning from the rising rainwater. Their abusive alcoholic father refuses to budge, causing the sibling in the pipe to drown while his last words to his brother is "Don't forget about me, Scotty." From that moment on, Scott never forgave his father. By the time he becomes an adult, he goes on a kidnapping spree by capturing young boys and forcing their fathers to go through a series of trials to prove that they're willing to sacrifice anything to save their sons. If the fathers fail to reach their sons in time, the kids drown inside a well when the heavy rain floods it.
• Genshin Impact:
  • The events of the Cataclysm are hinted to have been one for the Tsarista. What exactly that entailed remains unrevealed, but it is known that she was once a caring god and close friends with the Anemo Archon before resolving to rebel against the heavens. To this end, she hardened her heart and closed herself off, forming the Fatui and sending them across the other six nations to wreck havoc.
  • Among the Fatui Harbingers, those with revealed backgrounds each have a critical tragedy that started them down their path to becoming the Big Bad Ensemble they have become. For their leader, Pierro, it was the destruction of his homeland, Khaenri'ah, by the Heavenly Principles. For Signora, it was the death of her lover during the Cataclysm. She used an ancient art to transform herself into a living flame, going mad with grief and rage. For Tartaglia, it being lost in the Abyss for several months as a child and the resulting taint that twisted his personality into a Blood Knight.
  • Scaramouche's story features heavily into both the lore of Inazuma, and the Archon Quest for Sumeru. A prototype for a divine vessel, he was abandoned by the Electro Archon and discovered by the workers of Tatarasuna. The 2nd Harbinger, Dottore, had infiltrated Tatarasuna to lay groundwork for the future, and became fascinated with the idea of corrupting the puppet. His initial effort to trick the puppet into absorbing a curse failed, but Dottore was able to convince him that his friend had not only abandoned him, but also murdered an innocent to give him the "heart" he'd longed for. This betrayal slowly drove the puppet mad, eventually leading him to join the Fatui as the 6th Harbinger where he became Dottore's main test subject.
• Honkai Impact 3rd: Sirin, as shown in Chapter 24 of main story and in the official manga. She was an orphan taken in by Schicksal and then subjected to a number of ruthless and painful experiments in the Tower of Babylon along with many other children. After gaining Herrscher powers and escaping the laboratory she decided to take revenge on humanity.
• In the 1st Degree has James Tobin charged with grand theft and murder. There are indications in the interrogation tapes that the chain of events leading up to the events in the game go back to when Tobin and his wife Helen divorced. He apparently took it hard and just went on a steady downward spiral after that.
• Injustice: Gods Among Us:
  • We learn that the Injustice-verse Superman started his takeover of the world after the Joker tricked him into killing Lois and his unborn child by taking them up to space without a suit because he was under the effect of a Kryptonite-induced fear toxin that made Superman hallucinate that she was Doomsday. Lois' death triggered the hidden Dead Man's Switch in her to set off a nuke and blow up Metropolis. The Joker then successfully goaded Superman into murdering him, something that he was never able to do with Batman.
  • Injustice Steve Trevor was a Nazi spy who almost tricked Wonder Woman into surrendering the Amazons' Lasso of Hestia. His deception broke Diana's idealism and shaped her into the despicable Blood Knight she is today.
• In The Garden of Sinners Araya wants to take over Ryougi's body because he wants to reach Akasha, so all the meaningless deaths would at least have a reason and cease to be meaningless. ect.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] gives us the Start Of Darkness for series Big Bad Xehanort. What drove this man down his path of villainy? His Heartless went back in time and showed his younger self all of the evil acts he would do, even bringing him to the future to help them out. Even though he would forget what he saw and do, the actions he would take are now engraved in his heart. Xehanort isn't just happy messing around with the heroes- even his youth is fair game!
  • Double Subverted in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Master Xehanort orchestrated a series of events on Terra that almost mirrored Anakin Skywalker's descent into darkness, including the murder of Terra's mentor, Master Eraqus. Despite this, however, Terra never fell completely, and Eraqus' death only prompted him to get his act together and finally point his darkness and rage at the right person: Xehanort himself. Unfortunately, in the process, Terra's darkness ends up weakening his heart, allowing Xehanort to casually commit Grand Theft Me on him, resulting in the man we knew as Xehanort in the later games.
  • An update for Kingdom Hears Union χ titled Kingdom Hearts Dark Road follows Young Xehanort as a playable protagonist, back when he was still a friend of Eraqus'.
• In Live A Live, the hidden Medieval Chapter explains just who and what "Odio" is, and what made him into the demon of hatred influencing the various end bosses. It starts the young, heroic, Knight in Shining Armor Oersted on a fairly formula "Save the princess from a demon" plot, but... well, to say it all goes to hell about halfway through would be an understatement. By chapter's end, everyone in the kingdom believes Oersted to be the real demon (over something that was an accident, not that they saw that part of it), everyone who believed in him is either dead, or being "protected" from him, his best friend is revealed to be the one who ruined his life, and the princess declares her own hatred for him after he duels said traitorous friend to the death, and then commits suicide. Oersted is left with absolutely nothing. He then proceeds to just plain snap, and decides that if the world is so insistent that he is a demon, then a demon is exactly what he will be.
• Mega Man 11: What finally pushed Dr Wily into becoming a Mad Scientist bent on world domination was the rejection of his Double Gear System. With this device, robots were capable of achieving "unstoppable power and insurmountable speed" by overclocking their systems but as pointed out by Wily's friend and colleague Dr Light, it also caused dangerous overheating by pushing the robots beyond their limits. Not only Light (rather callously) rejected the system, he also convinced the overseeing committee to grant him the funds for his research into robots with independent thought. Outraged that Light's ideas were favored yet again, Wily spiked the prototype Double Gear into the ground and stormed off, swearing that someday everyone would know he was right all along. This effectively destroyed the friendship that both scientists once had, and Wily went on becoming the main antagonist of the classic series.
• The Jetstream DLC of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which is set before the events of the original game. shows how "Jetstream" Sam Rodriguez ended up involved with Desperado.
• In Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion, Livia Cassianus finds out that the late Emperor Sergius Corvius has always intended for her to inherit the Obsidian Perch (i.e. the throne of the Empire of Estellion). Before that, Livia falls in love with young Calius Septim. In the final cutscene, Calius gives his life to save Livia from the Big Bad pulling a Taking You with Me. Livia herself is scarred by the flamesoul explosion. At Calius's grave, Livia vows to remake the Empire into something new, claiming that traitors must be rooted out, and the blood of the fallen must be repaid. The description of the sequel Ravenmark: Mercenaries claims that six years have passed since then, and that the land is still reeling from the rule of the "Scarlet Empress".
• Issue #10 of The Secret World prompts the players to investigate the chain of events that led to the creation of the Black Signal, concluding with a full-blown Start Of Darkness in "Nightmare In The Dream Palace." Turns out that the seemingly omniscient voice of the Filth was once a social misfit and outcast by the name of John Copley, who ended up joining the Fear Nothing Foundation in a desperate attempt to find friends; the cult exploited this by providing him with friends and even a girlfriend to lust over, eventually sending him on a night on the town that ended with him experiencing a vision of the Dreamers. With John well and truly indoctrinated, the FNF employed him as a suicide bomber and charged him with delivering the Message to Orochi Tower... but John didn't die when he detonated. Instead, he became something else.
• Sengoku Basara 2 Heroes features a Gaiden story for Maeda Keiji, which in fact was a Start of Darkness for a villain in the actual game, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi starts out as a normal man, joining Keiji in pranks here and there, until he encounters Matsunaga Hisahide, who proceeds to humiliate him, and this causes him to become drunk with power, leaving Keiji and doing a lot of atrocities later on.
• In Sonic Adventure 2, Maria's death at the hands of G.U.N. was Shadow's main motivation for wanting to destroy the Earth. Eventually he remembers that she asked him to protect Earth and joins Sonic in fighting off the Final Hazard.
• This was how Cervantes became the pirate he is today in the Soul Series. His father, Philip de Leon, was a renowned sailor for his fleet and was shocked to find that the British ship he encountered during his private mission was a warship instead of a merchant ship. The warship opened fire on Philip's ship, sinking it and killing him in the process. This turn of events devastated Cervantes. He then decided that if anyone ever pledged allegiance to Spain, he'd abandon his country and become a pirate instead.
• Phase 10: The Wicker Bride of Splatterhouse (2010) gives one for the game's antagonist, Dr. West. His wife was burned inside of a wicker man by the townsfolk a few hundred years ago then you show up to kill her, as a result of a Stable Time Loop.
• Suikoden:
  • Prince Luca Blight from Suikoden II had his after his family was ambushed by bandits in one of their official travels. He and his father managed to escape, but his mother wasn't so lucky. Luca wanted to go back for her but his father said that he couldn't risk his life as the King. His mother was rescued shortly after, but she didn't return to the castle. Several months later, Luca managed to find out where she was and quickly escaped from the castle in order to meet her. He had a arduous journey, and a man took his horse in exchange for a pear and some water (Luca didn't want to eat the wild berries or drink the muddy water he found in the way). Upon finally meeting his mother, she started to scream and rip her hair out when Luca came close. One of their aids explained that she was brutally raped by the bandits and got pregnant, as well as going completely insane and unable to stand near men. Luca then snapped. He went back to the castle, but not before meeting the man who took his horse, who he murdered with joy. He was also lucky enough to find a small village along the way, and found that the bandits, as well as his mother's rapist, were sheltered in a house there. He stormed inside the hut and caught everyone off-guard, murdering everyone. When he found the rapist, he tortured and killed him gruesomely. When he returned to the castle, two things were permanently scarred on his mind: the disgust for people and the pleasure he got when killing. Thus, Luca Blight was born, a monster who causes a war for the sole reason of having an excuse to kill people by the thousands.
  • Suikoden Tactics reveals the backstory of the Ax-Crazy pirate Brandeau, who in Suikoden IV was seemingly just the Starter Villain and a method for Lazlo to end up with the Rune of Punishment and kick off the main plot. In Tactics, he's a fairly affable guy who's part of a pirate band that the main characters team up with to defeat the much worse pirate Steele who was the previous Rune of Punishment bearer. In the process, Brandeau's best friend Edgar (a fairly significant Posthumous Character in IV) is killed by Steele and their sidekick Peck is hideously mutated. Brandeau scored the killing blow on Steele and thus was cursed to be its next bearer. Out of guilt at his failure to save Edgar, Brandeau and Peck left the pirate band and struck out on their own. Several year and a lot of Sanity Slippage later, they encountered Lazlo who put an end to their misery.
• Super Robot Wars:
  • Original Generation Gaiden features the Start of Darkness of one of MX's Big Bad Albero Esto. It was only mentioned several times in MX, but in OG Gaiden, it's... rather full-blown and detailed.
  • In Alpha Gaiden, Char's Face–Heel Turn (since Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack is part of Alpha 2) comes about as he watches humanity continuously acting Too Dumb to Live and the horrifying results, and this disillusions and pisses him off enough to decide a Colony Drop is actually a good idea.
• Tales Series
  • A good chunk of the plot of Tales of Zestiria revolves around the main party to hunt down the Earthen Historia so as to watch past events, specifically those revolving around the Lord of Calamity Heldalf.
  • Tales of Berseria follows in the footsteps of above (not surprising since it's a prequel) as during the massive Wham Episode the truth of how the Big Bad became how he is is revealed by the Earthen Historia. In a somewhat meta fashion, due to the Historical Villain Upgrade that Velvet goes through in-universe (as the first one to hold the title of Lord of Calamity) the prologue of the game counts as this, showing what broke the sweet village girl she was before the Advent.
• The Walking Dead: Season Two: In Episode 5, if Clementine chooses to let Kenny kill Jane, she's given the option of shooting him in the head right afterwards. Do so, and she'll have murdered someone in cold blood for the first time. Suddenly, the Thou Shall Not Kill days of Season 1 feel very far away indeed.
• While Heihachi Mishima of Tekken has always been evil (he trapped own father underneath his house and let him starved to death in order to seize control of the family company) the events that truly caused him to become the kind of man he is today are finally revealed in Tekken 7. For all his faults he did genuinely love his wife Kazumi. Then one day she transformed into a Devil and tried to kill him, claiming that she had been sent to kill him by her clan and marrying him had simply been a way to get close to him. Heihachi was ultimately forced to kill her in self defense and in the aftermath became increasingly paranoid. This eventually led to him throwing his son Kazuya off a cliff to see if he possessed the same power as his mother, kicking off the plot of the entire series.
• Completing single-player in War of the Monsters unlocks a small cutscene that shows how the Kaiju you played as came to be (except for the unlockable monsters, where you get a "making of" video instead).
• As seen in a flashback, the death of Sophia in Xenogears was the Start Of Darkness for Krelian and Grahf.
• The Kiwami remake of Yakuza adds in additional cutscenes that deal with Akira Nishikiyama's descent into villainy during the 10-year timeskip that happens between the prologue and the first chapter, where his failed attempts to save his sister as well being constantly disrespected and being under Kiryu's shadow led to him becoming an ambitious crimelord who serves as the central antagonist of the game. The true moment when he becomes the villain he is in-game is when he was accosted by his unruly underling Matsushige while grieving his sister, upon which he snaps and murders him. Deciding that at this point he's too far gone, he declares that he'll kill as many as it takes to fulfill his ambitions.

---